


Slow As

by ishtarelisheba



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Rumbelle is Hope, sloth - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 16:29:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6863071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Gold finds a surprising little visitor in his back garden. Not quite sure what to make of it, he takes it to the smartest person he knows - the town librarian, on whom he just happens to have a crush. Non-magical AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow As

**Author's Note:**

> _Written because of violetfaust’s prompt: Baby sloth - Gold finds a lost baby sloth in his backyard. How the hell did it get to Maine (native to South America) and what can one do to keep it healthy? Next-door neighbor and librarian/researcher Belle to the rescue._

Both hands resting on his cane, mouth pressed in a thin line of confusion, Rumin Gold looked up into the small alligator juniper that grew in the far corner of his enclosed back yard. A strange… _something_ looked right back. 

It made a noise that sounded entirely too much like a sheep - the sound that alerted him to its presence in the first place, distracting him from inspecting his frangipanis for rust spots - and it served to worsen his bemusement. The thing that looked down at him with small brown eyes from his tree was most certainly _not_ a sheep. Or a bird. Or a treed cat, for that matter, which he might have assumed from this angle if not for its legs. Rumin was uncertain just what the hell it was. He stared at it in shock for a few more very long moments before realizing he should _probably_ do something about it.

On the way to and back from fetching a soft hand towel out of the linen cabinet, he considered how to get the creature down from his tree. When he returned to stand beneath the branches, he noticed it extending an arm, then pulling itself slowly along the slender limb it currently occupied, toward the trunk. It gave him an idea. One that ideally precluded any notion of him climbing on or up anything. Slinging the towel across his shoulder and lifting his cane, he held the base and extended it toward the branch. The animal turned its head to briefly look at the shiny brass handle before an arm reached for it. Its hold was precarious on the smooth cane shaft, but Rumin moved slowly, himself.

“Well, then,” he said as he brought it back down. It didn’t look terribly happy with its predicament. “At least now I have some idea what you are, now I’ve a good look.”

He wrapped the fuzzy, long-limbed little thing in the towel and held it bundled against his chest as he went indoors. It wasn’t like a cat or a dog; he couldn’t give it a bit of water and meat and expect it to be happy. He hadn’t the first clue what to feed it or how to care for it. He did, however, have an idea as to who might know.

Rumin walked back through to the kitchen and out the side door, going across the short strip of lawn connecting his house to Miss French’s smaller one. She would know what to do, or would know how to find out. He went carefully up her front steps, knocked at her door, and waited. When she didn’t answer after a minute or two, he knocked again. Still no answer. 

He checked his watch. It was a bit late, and past time for the library to close, but she _did_ sometimes stay after hours. Especially if she’d received a delivery of new books. Come to think of it, he’d seen a shipping van trundle past the shop today. Well, back to town it was, then.

On the drive, the animal he’d placed in the passenger seat began making plaintive, lamb-like sounds again. When they didn’t stop, he pulled over out of sheer pity and gathered it up, towel and all, unbuttoning his coat enough that he could tuck the poor creature inside. Once he’d buttoned up again just enough to hold it there, it quieted, and they managed the rest of the drive in peace.

Dusk had fallen and was rapidly fading into night when he pulled up in front of the library. Sure enough, the lights were still on. He (and his little hanger-on) went to the door to knock for her attention yet again, and he hoped that the librarian inside wasn’t so enthralled by her new acquisitions that she didn’t hear. 

For the moments he waited, Rumin wondered whether he should have called the veterinarian's office at the animal shelter first. He wasn’t too inclined to take the animal to Bill Thatcher, anyway - the man had an unhealthy fixation with chickens that made him a bit distrustful. Belle French, however, was the smartest person he knew. She supplemented her meager municipal income via the library by working as a professional researcher, and she knew a good bit about a great many things.

If he were perfectly honest with himself, he had more than a small crush on the librarian. If such could be called a crush at his age. He had the feeling it might fall more along the lines of being a creepy old man, should anyone else ever discover it. His visits to the library for reading material bordered on ridiculous in frequency as it was, but they had so few occasions on which they bumped into one another anywhere else, and he was weak enough of will that he couldn’t resist the only excuse he had to see her.

He heard the deadbolt turn from inside, and she opened the door a small space, peering out.

“Mr. Gold?” she asked, opening the door wider. “What are you doing here so late?”

“I-” he began, taken a bit aback by her greeting. “I have a question? If you’ve the time, Miss French?”

And then there was the fact that he seemed unable to be so familiar as to call her by her given name even in his head. 

“Oh, that must have sounded so impolite!” She laughed, stepping aside so that he could come in. “You surprised me, that’s all I meant.”

Rumin sighed, relaxing, though only by a hair. “I was wondering - what do you know about sloths?”

She gave him an odd look. _“Sloths?”_ she asked. “The animal? Sloths, as in slow and algae-covered sloths?”

“Well, not so much algae that I saw.” He slipped open the two of the topmost coat buttons he’d closed, revealing the small creature’s head. A thin, brown-furred arm poked slowly out. 

Miss French flapped her hands about a bit, making noises somewhere between squealing and cooing, and she darted away into the stacks that resided to the right side of the front desk.

Rumin blinked after her. She hadn’t _sounded_ frightened. He wasn’t sure just what to think, though. He looked down at the small sloth working a second arm out of the front of his coat. “We’ll wait a few minutes. I believe she’ll be back…”

It did take a good few minutes, and when she returned, he sat at one of the research desks with his coat off and the hand towel open across his lap. A baby sloth lay on its stomach there, appearing fairly content.

She set the heavy armload of books piled under her chin down on the table - carefully, so that she didn’t scare the animal - and pulled a chair up to sit in front of her visitors. Rumin smiled at the open look of curiosity on her face.

Miss French reached for one of the sloth’s small front feet, taking it to have a look. “So! It’s a two-toed sloth. There’s a start.” 

She smiled at it, then up at him before she placed its foot back on the towel and turned to sort through her books. His heart thumped oddly, and he looked down. The sloth leaned a bit to one side, extending an arm toward her. After a few moments and a flurry of flipping pages, she turned a book toward him.

“It looks as if it’s a _Hoffman’s_ two-toed sloth,” she said, pointing out a photograph of a much larger sloth with similar coloring as his little garden invader. He leaned to look as she went on. “They’re native to Central and South America. What on earth are you doing in _Maine,_ you poor dear?”

The little leg, waving just barely in mid-air, got her attention. She gave it her hand, and it wrapped the leg around two of her fingers. Rumin did his best to hide his flush as she rested her forearm across his knees.

“It was probably smuggled in recently. I suppose it _could_ have been bought through legal means, but I have a feeling that…” Miss French reached to take the sloth’s other arm quite briefly, lifting it up so that only its back legs remained squatted on his lap. She leaned down, tilting her head to look beneath the animal. “A feeling that she didn’t come into the country entirely on the up-and-up, small as she is.”

“It’s a she?” Rumin asked dumbly, having a difficult time thinking with much clarity while the librarian leaned _so_ close to his lap.

“Oh yes, I believe so.” She lowered the sloth again and, with the hand not currently held by the animal, tugged another book from the pile. The three on top slid down to the table. “She’s likely only a few weeks old, judging by similar appearance,” Miss French explained, placing this book on top of the first sprawled open for him, and she tapped a neat, pink-glazed fingernail next to a picture of a baby holding onto what would be the underside of its upside-down mother.

“They can live up to thirty-two years. My goodness,” she said, moving her finger down the last column of information on a page before turning to the next.

“Good Lord,” Rumin muttered. The sloth would likely outlive him, at that rate. 

“They’ve poor eyesight and hearing, but they make up for it by finding food by smell and touch…”

“What _do_ they eat?” he asked. If the little thing had been wandering around for very long, then surely it was hungry.

Miss French hummed, reaching for another of the books in her pile. A couple of minutes later, she’d found him an answer. “Mostly tree leaves, it seems. But they’ll eat flowers and fruit, as well,” she told him, summarizing from paragraphs on sloth eating habits. It took her only a second to remember. “Oh! Oh, wait, no! She’s a baby, so I think she- hold on.”

She extricated her hand from the sloth’s arm and hopped up from her chair, leaving Rumin a bit confused again with her flurry of excitement. She went over to the front desk and leaned over it from their side - and he looked studiously at a picture in the book next to him rather than at her when he realized how her skirt had ridden up so very, very high in the back with the way she stretched.

Miss French returned with a small, slim laptop, and set it on the table before she slid herself back into the chair again. It took a few minutes and some frustrated murmurs on her part, but eventually she gave a conspicuous, “Ah-ha!”

“Rescue operations feed orphaned sloths goat’s milk,” she said. “Every three to four hours. It seems that’s the closest to their mom’s milk, though it doesn’t have the antibodies.”

Rumin frowned. “Where in heaven’s name am I meant to obtain goat’s milk?”

 _“Well,”_ Miss French said. She smiled, obviously having this answer for herself. “There are three brothers outside of town who raise goats. They have a house at the edge of the meadow just past the Toll Bridge.”

He knew the place. It was one of few properties in Storybrooke that he didn’t own. “I’ll make a detour by on my way home.”

“You’ll need a small syringe and a flexible tip for it.” She turned the laptop so that he could see its screen, showing him the short video of a sloth smaller even than the one he held being fed by hand. It rested in a woman’s palm, and its legs wrapped around her hand as it happily suckled. “But I’m sure a dropper would be all right, in a pinch.”

“The pharmacy should have something suitable, should it not?”

“I’m sure they must.”

His hand absently stroked the small creature’s back as the video ended and another of a baby sloth being bathed loaded after it. He was hardly aware that he did, until a leg wound around his wrist. Rumin looked down, finding it craning its head to look at him, twitching a large, pinkish-brown nose in his direction.

“How _did_ you get here?” he asked quietly.

He listened while Miss French went through her books and a fair few websites, imparting the bits of knowledge she found that applied. He learned what was best for learning to climb (rocking chairs, interestingly enough) and the sorts of infections to keep an eye out for, as well as the best leafy flora for its diet once it could handle solid food.

A tiny squawk came from the small creature, and Rumin took his hand back reflexively. He and the librarian both looked down at it.

“Sloths make sounds?” she said.

Rumin looked up at her. “It does seem so. That would be how I became aware of it - her - in the first place. Heard a sound, followed it, and there she was.”

The sloth made a little bleating sound again, this time a bit more loudly. 

“Listen to you!” Miss French said, smiling as she reached over before she realized the liberties she’d been taking within his space. Hand paused in mid-air, she asked, “I’m sorry - may I?”

“Of course you may.” He smiled lopsidedly as she stroked the sloth’s head. 

Its eyes closed and it slowly raised its face toward her hand, appearing to very much appreciate the attention. Rumin knew the sentiment, he thought, if not the feeling itself. The sloth yawned, its tongue sticking out as if it meant to lick something, just before stretching its mouth wide.

“She’s so sweet,” Miss French cooed at the long-limbed ball of fuzz.

With her first round of information exhausted, she began closing her books. Rumin took this as a signal that it was time for him to leave. He reached for his coat, getting into it carefully so that he didn’t accidentally dislodge the sloth on his lap. He missed the look of disappointment that crossed Miss French’s face. 

She walked the short way from the table to the library door with him. “What do you plan to do?” she asked as he reached for the brass handle.

“How do you mean?”

“Well… are you going to care for her yourself? Or take her to the animal shelter? Because I’m not sure the shelter is the best place for her,” she said, not shy about giving her opinion when it was a helpless thing’s wellbeing concerned. “They don’t deal with much more than traditional house pets, and sloths need a great deal of personal attention. Much more than she would get there. And she couldn’t be left alone overnight. I’m concerned that she just wouldn’t thrive there, and I don’t want-”

“Miss French,” he attempted to interrupt.

“-someone there to call the Fish and Wildlife Service, because I think they might confiscate her, and-”

“You wouldn’t be encouraging someone to break the law, would you, Miss French?” he asked, teasing.

“Of course not!” She looked surprised at him for suggesting such. Then she grinned, realizing that was quite precisely what she might be doing. “Not so much break as veer around…”

Rumin chuckled. “I have no intention of taking her to the shelter. She’s going right home with me.” 

She looked at the little sloth, noticing how it had an arm wrapped around Mr. Gold’s wrist while he petted the top of its head. She smiled up at him. “Good,” she declared.

“And rest assured, Miss French, she has an excellent lawyer, should anyone attempt to lay a hand on her.”

Miss French laughed, and she reached up to pet the sloth before her visitors left. “You _could_ call me Belle, you know.”

The bit of quippery he had worked himself up to scattered. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“On the contrary.” She grinned, looking from the sloth to the man who was apparently now its caretaker. “I’d very much enjoy it.”

“My first name is Rumin,” he said, and he hoped it wasn’t too anvil-weighted a hint. There was a single person in this town who called him anything other than ‘Mr. Gold,’ and that happened to be the one who called him ‘papa.’

She nodded. “Oh, I know.”

“I only mean-” He hesitated, and after a few seconds under her expectant stare, went on. “Well, you could call me by my first name. If you like.”

Belle smiled up at him. “I’d like.”

Her hand brushed his, sending a thrill of electricity up his arm and making his heart ache with impossibilities. He knew that her responses tonight had all been over a cute, furry animal, and decidedly _not_ toward him. It had been nice to be in her presence, though, and as they exchanged good evenings and he walked back to his car at the curb, he hoped she might find more information in her search that could bring their paths to cross again.

# # # #

Belle had been watching the clock since sometime before noon, anxious for the end of her day to arrive. She still had books from the newest shipment to prepare for shelving and enter into the system, but for once, that could wait. 

She was always happy to see Rumin when he came in, whether alone or with his son for the occasional school project. It was a private game that she played, trying to predict what he might check out. He didn’t seem to have any sort of predictable tastes. It was more than that, though. Because he came in so often, she didn’t have to come up with some painfully obvious pretext for running into him or going into his shop. Her pocketbook couldn’t handle buying something every time she wanted to keep company with him.

The sloth that had appeared in his tree was the best turn of events she could have hoped for. The two hours she’d gotten to spend with him the previous evening had been wonderful. She’d never gotten to simply sit and talk with him for so long - the impersonal topic notwithstanding. And during her free moments today, she’d compiled more information for him and what she hoped would be his new pet.

Mary Margaret spent so long perusing the zoology shelves for books on birds that the library was currently ten minutes and counting past closing time. Belle sat behind the desk, fiddling with the browser tabs she had open on her laptop in the order she thought they would be most helpful to Rumin. She re-ordered the three videos she’d found on sloth care.

“You don’t have the _Birds of Maine Field Guide,”_ Mary Margaret said accusingly, coming to the desk empty handed.

“Yes, I believe you’re right about that, but I can-”

“Would you order it from another branch for me? You can still do that, can’t you?”

Belle smiled, counting to ten as she turned her chair toward her business computer to bring up the interlibrary loan system and type in the book title. If Mary Margaret had given her a half second longer to respond, that was precisely what she’d been going to suggest.

With the book on order and her last patron having _finally_ gone, she turned the monitor off and looked back to her laptop. She decided to finish playing the last video she’d found before locking up, and by the time it was over, Belle had worked herself into a good bout of concern. She needed to hurry; she now had a stop to make before going over to Rumin’s house.

Perhaps an hour later than she usually expected to get home, she hurried across the lawn and up the long set of front steps belonging to the Victorian next door. He answered after only a minute, the sloth hanging onto him with a back leg caught on the V of his waistcoat and a front leg wrapped securely around the shoulder of it.

“Belle?” he asked, taking in the slightly panicked expression on her face. “What’s the matter?”

“I was watching a video online about sloths,” she began, slipping inside past him. “And babies are attached - literally attached, holding on - to their mothers for the first nine months of their lives! I realized this little girl doesn’t have a mother to hang onto. There’s this woman who fosters sloth orphans and uploads tons of videos of them, and she uses a teddy bear to soothe their need for clinging, and I thought yours needed one…”

Belle looked up at Rumin, who had gone from worried to amused during her rambling, and she took the stuffed toy from under her arm. “It… seemed much more of an emergency while I was watching the video…” she said, holding it out to him.

“That’s very kind of you. Thank you.” He took the proffered bear. “And I’m certain that Molly thanks you, as well.”

“You’re very welcome,” Belle said, sighing, glad that she didn’t look as silly as she’d suddenly thought she must.

He closed the door and looked down at the bear. It wasn’t much - just a fleecy brown teddy bear quite a bit larger than the baby sloth - but he held it as if it were some piece of treasure.

The sloth’s mouth moved slowly toward Rumin’s tie, and he raised a hand to guide her head gently away with a fingertip. “No, no, not my tie,” he murmured as if they’d had discussions about it before, and the sloth rested her head against his shirt collar.

He moved his free hand near Belle’s back, not quite touching her as they moved farther into the entryway. “Why don’t we go and see how she likes her ersatz mother?”

“You named her!” Belle realized. “Molly?”

He smiled, and she’d be damned if it wasn’t almost shy. “Short for Molasses,” he said. “It’s a bit on the nose, but it was that or Snail.”

“It’s _adorable.”_

“I thought it was fitting.”

They went into the living room, and she sat down on the sofa a cushion down from him so that he could place Molly between them. He did, once he managed to get all of the sloth’s limbs detached from his clothing. Belle set her laptop on the coffee table and showed him the video of the baby sloth and its teddy bear. He placed Molly similarly on top of the toy Belle had brought along.

Molly was all right with the stuffed bear, though she seemed to like clinging to Rumin far better. When he reached out to pet her, she turned her head and stretched an arm out for him, curling it rather insistently around his hand. He sighed and they watched as she transferred herself slowly from the bear to his arm, and he brought her back up to his shoulder.

Belle gave him an amused look.

“She… _bleats_ when I leave her alone while she’s awake,” he admitted sheepishly, stroking the sloth’s back.

“Ah,” Belle replied simply. She grinned.

“We’ve come to an understanding. She can cling as much as she likes, just as long as she doesn’t chew on my clothing.”

“Well, if that sort of agreement is all it takes,” Belle said with a lightness precisely contrary to the disbelief that she’d let it come out of her mouth. She turned to her laptop, taking her time closing the video and queueing up the next.

Rumin gave her a look of surprise, schooling it quickly away. Of course that wasn’t what she meant. He was an idiot, and obviously desperate for even the slightest attention from her, and she’d come over because she was worried about Molly. That was all.

“I, um- I have some other videos that I wanted to show you. If it’s not too late,” Belle said, smiling innocently over at him.

“Hm?” He shook himself from a slight daze. “Nonsense, it isn’t too late.”

“I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?” Another thought occurred to her, and she checked the corner of her laptop screen for the time. “Oh, no, is it after Bae’s bedtime?”

“He’s out like a light. Has been for an hour,” Rumin assured her. “He had a footie match after school - I barely got him through dinner.”

Belle’s posture relaxed again. “Oh. Okay, then. Good.” She took the teddy bear from between them, putting it on the other side of her so that she could scoot herself and her laptop closer to him.

“They aren’t supposed to be bathed often,” she said while they watched a video of a girl bathing a baby sloth. “But since there’s really no telling where Molly came from or what she’s been into, it can’t hurt to give her a bath sometime soon.”

“I wasn’t quite sure how to. I was afraid I might injure her by going about it the wrong way,” he admitted.

Belle touched his leg and pointed to the screen. “Watch how they dry him!”

Rumin stared at her hand while it lingered near his knee, barely registering the quick rub with a cloth and hanging up to dry that the sloth in the video received. He wasn’t sure what came over him, to make him touch her, but before he knew it he’d moved to overlap his little and ring fingers with hers. He had barely made contact with her when she took his hand properly and turned away from her laptop.

“I also read that they like green beans,” Belle told him, though the way she looked at him had very little to do with the eating habit of sloths. “You know, for when Molly is eating more solid things. And they enjoy hibiscus flowers as a treat.”

“I could plant some hibiscus trees for her,” he said more than a little distractedly, pinned still by the sky blue of her eyes.

The smile she gave him was bright and sweet. “You could?”

“Easily.” He nodded. “I can order plants, so they’ll bloom earlier.”

“I’m sure Molly will love that…”

Belle seized her chance, leaning in toward him. Just shy of meeting him, tilting her face up and closing her eyes, she moved forward until she her lips touched his in what she thought was the loveliest, warmest kiss she’d ever had.

It was perhaps only the shock of it that kept Rumin from wrapping his arms around her. He wasn’t sure whether it was wishful thinking, but she kissed him as though she wanted him, catching his lower lip between hers in a way that had his heart pounding. She smelled like her library - books and printer ink and the flowery lotion she kept on her desk.

“Papa!” he heard, and it was Bae’s little voice calling out for him from upstairs.

With such reluctance that it hurt, Rumin pulled away from Belle’s kiss and reached for his cane.

“Should I go?” Belle asked quietly, as if Bae would hear her. She stood with him. “Maybe I should go.”

Rumin shook his head, hoping as fervently as he could that she wouldn’t. “No, no, you needn’t. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to intrude.”

“You aren’t intruding.”

“I know it’s late and-”

“It isn’t late. Not for me, not really.”

“-you’re probably ready to go to sleep, too, and-”

“Please, don’t go?”

Her rambling cut off suddenly, and she nodded. “I’ll just…” She sat back down.

“A few minutes,” he said again, limping his way toward the stairs

Before he was too far up the stairs to be out of sight of the living room, he leaned down to catch another look at her, as if she might disappear as soon as he left. She was smiling and moving throw pillows, making herself comfortable. He felt Molly tighten an arm around the shoulder of his waistcoat, and he looked at her. He supposed he had this little creature to thank for bringing Belle over to his house this evening.

“Papa?” Bae called again.

“I’m here,” he replied as he continued up from the middle landing, to let his son know that he was on his way.


End file.
